


le génie du mal

by Ajaxthegreat



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bloodplay, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Some Artfully Displayed Dead Bodies, Truly Wild Ass Notions of What Is Sexy, Who knows how to take that one with this fucking series, Will Finds Out, a lot of blood, ass eating, lol, probably, quoting the bible and being horny about it!!!!!!!, there's also a lot of talking, we describe how we would murder each other but it's Horny for some reason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:00:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26897824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ajaxthegreat/pseuds/Ajaxthegreat
Summary: “A war of attrition,” Will says.Hannibal’s eyes do not leave Will’s fingers, tight on the railing.“Waged by whom?”“Both of us,” Will says, voice suddenly very rough.“Won by whom?”Will feels himself smile. “Both of us.”
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 36
Kudos: 261





	le génie du mal

**Author's Note:**

> what year is it

Will sees the Devil on the i-10 out of Baton Rouge. 

He isn’t sure what he sees, then: a tall man, a dark suit, standing too still on the side of the road. So still it makes Will sick to look at him. 

He can’t explain how he knows, or why it makes a difference, but he drives back to New Orleans that night and packs. 

He leaves the force, goes to teach. Climbs into himself and shuts the door. 

He can’t say no to Jack. He wants to, of course, but he can’t.

(He doesn’t want to. He wants to see. He needs to see.) 

It takes no time at all to fall back into them: those minds that he tells himself are darker than his. It is like putting on an old, familiar coat, and Will tells himself he hates how well it fits. How it feels. 

It wears on him. He isn’t sure if it’s the work itself, or all the lies he’s telling himself about it. But it wears on him. 

He doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t eat. He shakes and shakes and shakes; in his bed, in his office, in the field.

He needs stability so badly he can barely walk on his own. He feels so out of control he can hardly stand to close his eyes. 

Stability and control look very familiar to him, but Will takes a very long time to place it. 

When he does, they are in Hannibal’s office. 

Hannibal mentions that Will seems distracted, asks if he’s feeling very well, and Will says, “I can’t stop thinking about the Chesapeake Ripper.” 

Will is exhausted. He’s never been quite so exhausted, and through the new lens of his exhaustion, he notices all at once just how still Hannibal is sitting. 

Something prickles across the back of his neck and Will shakes it off. 

Hannibal says, “Tell me about him.” 

There is something in the line of Hannibal’s shoulders that seems almost - 

No. That’s not right. That can’t be right.

Will sighs, runs a hand over his face. He says, “He’s - he’s.” He stops, searches for a safer word, “Terrifying.” 

Hannibal’s shoulders fall infinitesimally. On Hannibal, it manages to look disappointed. 

“Will,” he says, very much a reprimand, “I cannot hope to help you without honesty.” 

Will laughs, and even to his own ears it sounds humorless. 

“Honesty.” 

“Of course,” Hannibal says, tilting his head as if he will be able to see further inside Will that way. It has always made Will .... uncomfortable. 

No. That’s not right. 

Not uncomfortable at all.

Hannibal says, “Honesty is the foundation of our most productive relationships, Will.” 

“Right,” Will says, entirely too tired to wade through the usual performances. “It’s just- ”

There it is, again: stillness like nothing Will has ever seen from a human being before. It is similar to the way a hunting animal goes still: as if Hannibal’s heart has stopped beating. Another prickle of recognition skitters across the back of Will’s neck, out of reach. 

It startles the truth out of him. 

“He’s fascinating,” Will says, voice soft like he’s telling some sort of deeply illicit secret. “Beautiful.” 

Hannibal does not even blink. Will suddenly can’t look at him, feels a horrible, traitorous blush creeping up his neck when he says, “The way he works, it’s - it’s art.” 

Hannibal just waits, and Will, unmoored by his own honesty, says, “I think I’ve seen him before.” 

There is - and has always been - something about Hannibal that makes Will feel very safe. It has nothing to do with his behavior as a psychiatrist; there’s just something in the detached vacancy of his expression that makes Will feel as though he hardly exists at all. It is an enormous comfort. 

“Have you really seen him before?” Hannibal asks, and he’s leaned forward a little, which manages to convey a kind of unsettling eagerness, “Or does he simply feel very familiar to you?” 

Will sighs, laughs. His skin feels very warm. The way Hannibal says _Familiar_ feels like he means something else, but Will can’t place what it is. 

He thinks of it again: the thing he saw on the i-10. The sense of familiarity he felt, looking at it. The same sense he feels at those beautiful crime scenes. 

“What do you think of the Devil, Dr. Lecter?” 

Hannibal seems to consider the question seriously. He always takes Will seriously, which is something Will isn’t sure he likes or not. 

“The Christian idea of the Devil has changed dramatically in a short period of time,” he says, “And inspired some of the great masterworks of art and literature.” 

Will nods. “Transformation and creation.”

“Two things your Ripper seems to value as well.”

_“My_ Ripper?” 

Hannibal tilts his head. “Isn’t he?” 

Will gives another humorless laugh. 

“I ... don’t. Think so.” 

Will has extensive practice with making himself feel things he is supposed to feel. He should be uncomfortable with this, so he is. The idea of _His Ripper_ shouldn’t thrill him, certainly shouldn’t excite him, so it - it doesn’t. 

It doesn’t. 

Hannibal asks, mild but with a strange undercurrent of focused curiosity, “What is he, then?” 

Will takes a moment to consider the question. 

“He’s .... a narcissist,” Will starts, in an affected tone of disgust, but it sounds weak. “He sees his victims as.... pigs. Trash.” 

“Will.” 

It’s the same tone a teacher might take with an unruly student. Will blushes. 

He sighs. “No,” he admits. He feels helplessly drawn to honesty under Hannibal’s vague disapproval. “No, they’re more like... ingredients.” 

He thinks strangely of Hannibal’s vacant, almost violently detached stare and without thinking says, “They hardly existed at all to him.” 

The hair stands up on his arms, but he doesn’t connect it with anything. It feels bizarre, to observe himself responding instead of feeling it. Like he is protecting himself from knowing something. 

He feels himself talking but doesn’t seem to be able to control it.

“He’s.... exact, but still sort of ... creative,” Will says, eyes going to a particularly detailed sketch of Hannibal’s on the wall of his office, “His commitment to his own artistry, it’s almost... romantic.”

Hannibal’s eyebrows furrow just a little. 

“You think he feels romantic toward his victims?” 

Will laughs. It’s a real, genuine laugh, and not at all appropriate. Hannibal’s mouth curls up at one corner in response. 

“No,” Will says, still laughing, “No, just. Romantic in the purely aesthetic sense. I don’t think affection is possible for him.” 

At this, something in Hannibal stops moving so utterly that it leaves Will with the dizzying sense that Hannibal has disappeared from the room. 

All the parts of Will’s mind very stubbornly refuse to communicate with each other, still protecting him from some awful realization, so all he feels at the moment is a very strong inexplicable desire to leave, and an equally strong inexplicable desire to beg Hannibal’s forgiveness. 

For no reason he can discern, Will feels compelled to add, “I don’t feel comfortable being .... complimentary. Of him.” 

It feels bizarrely like an apology. 

Hannibal looks, as if studying, at all the individual parts of Will’s face. His eyes are the only part of his whole body that move, and the general impression it leaves makes Will feel a little sick to his stomach. 

“Why not?” 

“Isn’t it obvious?” 

“I don’t think it’s obvious to you.” 

Will lets out a long breath. Shakes his head. Laughs again. “It should be.” 

Hannibal stops his horrible stillness with something that Will interprets as a conscious effort. He shifts, minutely. Breathes. He wasn’t doing that before. When he speaks again, his tone of voice is notably softer, and again Will is left with the impression that this takes effort. 

“There is no obligation in this office, Will. Nothing should be anything. I only ask for honesty.” 

It sounds easy, when Hannibal says it. Everything sounds easy when Hannibal says it. Will, who wages war against himself even in his sleep, cannot help but lean towards the self-assured simplicity of Hannibal’s voice. He always has. 

“I .... admire it,” he whispers. His voice is very soft, trembling delicately. “Him. His work. The way everything’s so - beautiful. The - order. Of his mind.” 

“This distresses you.” 

Will nods, chews his lip. “Yeah. No. It - it should distress me. It does, it’s - I dunno, it‘s not right, is it?” 

“There is no right or wrong way to feel, Will.” 

“My admiration for a serial killer is wrong,” Will says, though it feels like he’s trying to convince himself. “My - appreciation. It’s not - academic, it’s. The way he kills, the way he shows them to us, he’s so. Deliberate. Graceful. There’s nothing wasted. He’s so sure of himself.” 

A prickle of recognition passes by Will again, the same as the Devil on the highway. He starts to sweat. 

“It scares me,” he admits, glancing up at Hannibal and back down again. “It scares me to find it so beautiful.” 

Worse, and hidden much deeper, is the fact that it does not scare him at all. 

Hannibal is quiet for a long time, as if making a decision.

“Do you know the Geefs brothers?” Hannibal asks, and Will looks up in surprise at the strange question. 

“If it’s not murder or fishing, chances are no.”

Hannibal ignores Will’s watery smile and continues, voice suddenly so light it sends a shiver down Will’s spine. The shiver prickles at Will, too. Needles at him to notice something. 

“Artists,” he says, getting up and walking around the office. Will has noticed he tends to do that when he’s particularly agitated, as if he knows his stillness is off putting and he’s trying to counter it. “One of the brothers, Joseph, was commissioned by the Church to make a sculpture for the pulpit in St. Paul’s in Liège.” 

Hannibal reaches up and straightens one of his sketches on the wall, then turns and looks over the rest. 

Will watches him, very suddenly and acutely aware of Hannibal’s rather striking economy of movement: deliberate, graceful. Nothing wasted. 

Something cold rushes up around Will’s ankles like a rising tide. He can see it out of the corner of his eye: black water, covering the floor of the office. Fear. 

Surely not - no. No.

“Joseph’s finished work was quite beautiful,” Hannibal says, now all the way across the room, “depicting the fallen angel Lucifer in repose.” 

The room is so quiet that Will can hear the rushing of the water at his ankles. He can feel it pulling at his clothes, rising up to his knees. It’s freezing. 

“The Church accepted his work, of course,” Hannibal says, and his voice is quieter than before in spite of him being further away, “They displayed it in the pulpit of the cathedral.” 

Will swallows hard. The water’s up to his waist. It touches his fingertips, dangling over the arms of his chair. 

“Lucifer was so beautiful,” at this Hannibal looks very sharply at Will, and the sudden searing, unmistakable intent of it shocks Will all the way to his toes, “That the congregation could not look away from him. They stopped listening for God. They stopped heeding the bishop. They came only to look at him.” 

The water reaches his chest and Will feels himself go utterly, deathly still.

Hannibal - 

His mind doesn’t want to finish, so it doesn’t. 

“The statue was removed from the pulpit. It was said it possessed an unhealthy beauty.” Hannibal’s voice is casual, as it always is, but with an undercurrent like a knifepoint. “Joseph’s brother was commissioned to remake the work - to make it less beautiful, easier to look at for the parishioners.”

Will finds his voice sounds embarrassingly weak when he says, “Why are you telling me this?” 

“The congregation was robbed of a master work, Will. For nothing but their own notions of morality.” 

Will’s voice is uncomfortably rough when he says, “You think the Ripper.... is a master work.” 

Hannibal tilts his head, looks very far inside Will. “Do you?” 

Will’s voice shakes when he says, drowning in honesty, “Yes.” 

There is something like pride in Hannibal’s expression, then. He says, “They suffered needlessly, Will. They suffered for the same struggle facing you now: their own inability to reconcile the beauty which so captivated them with the monster they knew Lucifer to be.” 

For a clear, terrible half-second, Will’s mind replaces the fuzzy, nebulous face of the Devil on the i-10 with Hannibal’s.

Will says, as if in a trance, “Monster is relative.” 

“As is suffering.” 

Everything becomes very clear all at once, and Will cannot understand how it hid it from himself before. 

“Not beauty,” Will whispers. “Not to him.” 

Hannibal’s mouth curves. He has gone hunting-animal still again. It is terrifying to see it for what it is.

“Morality and suffering are subject to whim, Will. They belong to the individual. They are fundamentally human.” It is truly unsettling, with the full weight of understanding rising up in front of him like a tidal wave, to see Hannibal’s stillness from so far away. 

Hannibal says, eyes now terrifyingly, devastatingly intent on Will’s face, “Beauty is for god.”

Will does not know whether Hannibal is aware of his realization or not. He lets him go after their session regardless, and Will spends the entire drive home looking in the rear view mirror. He still hasn’t formed the whole thought, opting to leave it as a sort of vague terror in the back of his mind. He doesn’t know what to do with it.

The dogs crowd around his feet as soon as he gets home, cold noses pressing into the palms of his hands, the backs of his knees. 

They smell his fear. Will wonders if Hannibal could too, and for some reason that consideration hits him so hard he has to sit down. His hands are shaking. 

He doesn’t feel the way he is supposed to feel about this. The fear in his chest, which had frozen his blood an hour ago, now feels uncomfortably hot. It hardly feels like fear at all. 

He pours himself a drink. It’s too much, but nothing seems to have any sort of definable boundaries anymore - everything seems to be everything else. His ideas of concepts like _terrible_ and _beautiful_ and _captivating_ have all started to meld into each other. Not even his fear feels right. It’s too much like -

Best not. 

He downs the drink in one go - far too much, but not even the burn of it feels right, and he’s asleep before he has a chance to make it to his bed. 

His dreams are of drowning. 

It is not drowning of the usual kind. 

He is standing on the side of a highway in Louisiana. He recognizes it dimly, slowly, as if emerging from the mud. Interstate 10, out of Baton Rouge. 

There’s water at his feet. In the moonlight it looks thicker than it ought to, black as blood. It’s different than it was in Hannibal’s office. It’s not cold, and it’s not fear - it’s something else. It’s so warm, and it’s rising fast as a flood, up past Will’s ankles, his knees, his waist, up over his ribs, and his eyes roll back in his head, and he can’t seem to move at all. He’s so still, too still. The black water reaches his chest and he feels his heartbeat slow to nothing.

It feels unspeakably good, vile, thick and warm and not like water at all, and Will feels himself make a helpless sound through his teeth. 

There’s a train coming. He feels it before he hears it before he sees it. A rhythmic shaking of the ground and an odd ripple through the water drowning Will and a long, forlorn wail of a whistle. One single headlight, the front grate of it pushing through the water silently, easily, like it’s not even there. No - it’s not one headlight, it’s two. It’s a car. It’s Will’s car. Isn’t it?

Someone is in the front seat. It’s him, isn’t it? 

Will goes even further still, concentrates with everything in his body to see the face, to see it seeing him. 

It’s - 

Hannibal, except it’s not, it’s Will. He has the dizzying, sick sensation of being both places at once, and then the water crawls up his throat and into his mouth, and it’s so _hot,_ it feels - Jesus, it feels _so fucking good_ -

He’s pulled violently out of sleep by his phone ringing. He’s sweating and shaking, and his throat hurts like he’s been screaming, and he is so achingly hard it hurts. 

He squeezes his eyes shut and presses his fingers against them hard enough to see stars. Then he answers the phone. 

“Graham.” 

“Will, how fast can you get to DC?”

“Good morning to you too, Jack.” Will’s voice is in tatters. It sounds obscene and he hates that Jack can hear it. He can imagine what Jack’s assuming. 

“He’s back, Will. Something’s different.” 

Will’s fingers tighten on the phone until it crackles. 

“Gimme an hour.” 

Jack makes a noise of assent, distracted, and then adds, “Oh, and bring Hannibal, will you? I could use the extra eyes.” 

Will laughs, though it’s more like the noise a bird makes when it’s startled out of a bush. It doesn’t occur to him to argue, and it doesn’t occur to him to tell Jack anything at all. He thinks maybe he ought to be concerned about that. 

“‘Course,” he says, fingers tingling, “We’ll be right there.” 

Will isn’t sure how he gets to Georgetown. He doesn’t remember calling Hannibal, but he knows he must have because his heartbeat drowns out the radio the whole drive. He doesn’t remember getting in his car; suddenly he’s there, putting it in park. 

He thinks about what he might find. He thinks about seeing Hannibal, really seeing Hannibal, and about Hannibal seeing him. 

He isn’t sure what he’s going to do, but the feeling in his chest isn’t - it isn’t fear.

It’s anticipation. 

That should disturb him, but he can’t seem to muster the energy to make himself feel disturbed. There’s something there - some odd mix of relief and excitement, something different from the other times. 

He has the brief, absurd feeling of preparing for a first date, and laughs, alone behind the wheel. 

Jack is already shaking his head before he’s even out of the car. 

“It’s different this time, Will.” 

They’re at a mausoleum. 

Will, already deeply distracted and sweating on the back of his neck, closes his coat in the car door and curses. 

“Shit. What?” 

Jack looks at him, characteristically distant concern in every line of his face. He’s worried, but he won’t tell Will to leave. 

“You okay?” 

Will breezes past him toward the tape. He’s practically shivering. He needs to see it. 

“Yeah, I’m fine, just had a late -”

He stops. 

It’s different this time. 

There are two victims: one, on the ground draped in a beautiful blue-gray silk, stretching up into the arms of the other. There is a clear and blatant longing in the position of her body, the way her arms stretch up in something like gratitude, like she’s seeking absolution. The one doing the holding has wings, molded so seamlessly off his skin that they look like they come right out of his shoulders, and a quiver of arrows on his back. Both of them are posed so carefully, so gracefully, that they almost look like they are still alive.

The bodies are on a stone pedestal, the only thing in the room save for a skylight directly overhead. 

It is painstakingly beautiful to look at. 

It makes Will ache, suddenly and viscerally in every part of his body, and he doesn’t realize his eyes are wet until Jack touches his shoulder. 

Will jumps, wipes his eyes. He can’t look at Jack. 

Quietly he says, “What - uh, how do you know it’s -”

“The wings,” Jack says. “They’re made out of 7 of his previous victims.” 

Will looks up sharply, takes a step closer. 

The wings are made of bones. The victim’s skin is broken open and the base of the wings is made, mostly, of the backs of his own ribs. 

_See?_ it says. _Here I am._

Will hadn’t even noticed the bones before. He was so transfixed by the artistry of it, the abject romanticism of it - 

Will reaches out, touches the bare feet of the victim on the floor, and whispers, “Oh, you are romantic, aren’t you?” 

“What do you see here, Will?” 

Everything, he wants to say. Everything. The anticipation winds up tight in his chest, makes his stomach clench. He’s suddenly dizzy, lightheaded. 

“Antonio Canova,” says Hannibal’s voice, and it echoes softly over the mausoleum floor. At the sound of it Will finds himself making a fist in his coat pocket. He can hardly stand it, Hannibal’s voice. 

Hannibal says, _“Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss.”_

Hannibal’s presence, now that Will knows him, is very different: terrifying and magnetic and deeply, profoundly distracting. It feels like fighting a tide, not turning toward him. 

But this. Will can’t tear his eyes away from it, not even to look at Hannibal. 

Next to him Jack’s voice says, “Thanks for coming out, Doctor.” 

There is a pause, and a pained sort of sigh, and then Hannibal says, “It is.... quite beautiful, in its own way, isn’t it?” 

He sounds utterly torn. Regretful, respectful. Will feels himself smile wryly. He wants to laugh. He wants to cry. He wants to throw himself at Hannibal’s feet and watch him work. He wishes he’d made this himself. 

Those last two thoughts startle fear back into him, a shock of cold in his too-hot chest.

Jack sighs. “I suppose it is. You recognize it?” 

“I do. Canova sculpted something quite similar in 1787.” 

“This is Psyche on the floor here?” 

Will still can’t look at either of them. He walks away from their conversation, toward the victims, but he still can’t help but hear Hannibal’s wistful tone of voice when he answers Jack’s question. 

He looks at the victim on the floor: naked, graceful like a dancer, wrapped in an extravagantly expensive silk that Will can’t help but notice is the same color as his own eyes.

“Psyche’s name is Soul, in the Greek. More beautiful than even Aphrodite, and quite famously human. She was ... emotional. Alluring. Rash, in her myths.” 

Will closes his eyes. His fear feels slower in his chest now, warmer again. It is almost pleasant. 

No, that’s not right. 

It is distinctly pleasant. Insistently so. 

“Cupid - called Eros in the Greek, but our sculptor was Italian - was her lover. They were married.” 

The wings rise up huge and beautiful in front of Will again, even with his eyes closed. He feels it in his own fingertips: the careful placement of each bone. The commitment to this work. It feels almost - loving.

“He was not nearly so human as she was,” Hannibal says quietly. Will feels an almost unbearable urge to turn and grab Hannibal’s wrists. He isn’t sure if he wants to kiss them or break them. “He often brought madness and confusion.” 

Jack makes a thoughtful sound, then asks, “Cupid’s the god of love, right?” 

There’s a smile in Jack’s voice, like he likes hearing Hannibal speak. 

Will can’t blame him. There’s something about Hannibal’s voice that is .... captivating. The way it sounds now, against nothing but the long expanse of mausoleum marble and this masterpiece, is devastating. 

“Reductively, yes. But he was Eros first. And Eros did not bestow love kindly.” 

Will opens his eyes and looks up at the victims on the pedestal again, struck all the way to his chest with a pang of violent longing. 

“He would stab men through the heart with desire,” Hannibal says, and Will has to reach out and grab the pedestal. He watches his own knuckles go bone white against it. “He was violent, and unforgiving, and as terrible as he was divine.” 

Without looking away from the victims, Will says, “And Psyche knew that?” 

Hannibal pauses. “Not at first,” he says, and Will glances over and blushes instantly at the plain and honest mischief on Hannibal’s face, “But eventually.” 

When did his fear turn into this? 

Was there ever fear at all, or was it just this breathless, stunned anticipation? 

There is a long pause, during which Will finds himself gripping the pedestal very hard, and then Hannibal turns back to Jack and speaks quickly, as if he’s forgotten he was meant to be talking to him. 

“What’s happening here is immediately after Psyche’s visit to the underworld. She was given a box by Persephone, which she utterly could not resist opening.” 

Will’s lips curl up in spite of himself. 

“Well,” he murmurs, “She had to see what was inside.” 

When Hannibal continues, his voice is so warm, so pleased and so _proud_ that it makes Will actively weak in the knees. 

“Of course she did. She opened the box and a most terrible sleep of hell came over her. She could not wake. She fell into a world of nightmares. This,” he says, gesturing to the two victims, “is the moment she is woken up again, in her lover’s arms.” 

“Beautiful,” Will whispers, reaching out and touching a feather that’s the shard of a femur. There is a long pause while Hannibal just looks at him. Will feels like he might fall under the weight of it. 

Finally, Hannibal turns to Jack and says, “Canova’s work was part of a turn to the romantic - artists began depicting moments of intense movement and emotion, rather than the more rigid portraiture of neoclassicism.” 

“So he’s .... turning?” Jack asks. “This is... what, his next artistic period?” 

Will snorts. 

Hannibal sounds utterly delighted when he says, “Something to add, Will?” 

Will turns to look at Hannibal, and the sight of him - he thinks he might die here. 

“This is not his next artistic period,” Will says, eyes on Hannibal. “This is a love letter.”

Jack makes a face, but Hannibal is already speaking over Jack’s inevitable question. 

“You told me recently, Will,” Hannibal says, voice low and warm, “that you did not think the Ripper capable of affection. Do you still feel this is the case?”

Jesus Christ.

He doesn’t answer. He can’t answer. Not in front of Jack. 

Whatever shows on Will’s face makes Hannibal’s eyes go frighteningly dark, almost possessive. At the same time, Jack grips Will’s shoulder as if to keep him from falling. 

“Will, you alright? You don’t look well.” 

“It’s .... better this way,” Will says, voice weaker than his shaky legs. He’s not speaking to Jack. He looks up at Psyche and Eros. “He’s better. It’s better, that they were alive.” 

If he tilts his head just right, he can still see Psyche breathing. 

He can feel Hannibal across the room, as if he’s standing right next to him. Will swears he can feel his body heat, smell his laundry detergent, hear the slow steady beating of his heart, from 30 feet away.

_“Remember that you molded me like clay,”_ he says softly. _“And now you come to turn me back to dust.”_

It’s been a while since he’s quoted the Bible but he’s feeling .... religious. 

_“You clothed me with skin and flesh,”_ Hannibal says, voice low and only for Will. 

Will smiles. He answers several questions at once: “Yes.”

It shouldn’t be so easy, this feeling.

He should be disgusted, terrified, unnerved. He should be ashamed and repulsed by himself, by Hannibal. He should, at the very least, be afraid. 

He is afraid, but it’s lost in the anticipation, the almost desperate curiosity he feels as he goes to his normal session. 

He shouldn’t go, certainly not now. Not after Hannibal looked him in the eye in the space between Psyche and Eros and _saw him._ But he goes. 

He needs to see, he needs to see what will happen. 

When he arrives, Hannibal looks almost surprised to see him. 

“Will.”

His eyes do not warm - they’ve never done such a thing as warm, and Will doesn’t think they are capable of it - but they do sharpen intensely on Will’s face, the same way a person might look at a painting of one of the saints. Will resists the urge to squirm under it. 

“Busy?” Will asks, mouth quirking up a little at the corner. 

Hannibal’s affection is all over his face. It’s in his body, too. He’s unusually relaxed. It’s .... startling. The way it looks. 

Will is struck - not for the first time - by just how beautiful Hannibal is. Alien, unforgiving. Like a force of nature. 

“Please, come in.” 

The office is the same. Somehow Will expects something about it to feel different now, after the flood of fear and understanding he’d experienced here last time. It doesn’t. 

He does something he has not done since their early days together: he goes to the ladder and climbs up to Hannibal’s balcony library. Puts himself on higher ground. He’s not sure why he does it - it’s not the same scramble for power and leverage that it was before.

Hannibal doesn’t mention it, though the way he tips his face up toward Will fees distinctly pointed. 

Will waits for Hannibal to open his mouth to speak, and then before he can, Will says, “Something’s been bothering me, Dr. Lecter.” 

He’s never been so rude as to interrupt Hannibal before, and certainly not so deliberately. He can see how it puts Hannibal a bit off balance, and it gives him the same tug of satisfaction as standing over him on the balcony does. 

A series of expressions cross Hannibal’s face: irritation, anger, pride. The pride warms Will and also frightens him. 

“Your work for Jack?” Hannibal asks, face twisting briefly in disgust as if he can barely speak Jack’s name. Will can feel the full, murderously proprietary force of it: Hannibal cannot stand Jack’s mentorship of him.

He’s much freer with his expressions today, something Will has never experienced from him before. There’s a kind of terrifying novelty to it, as if Hannibal has removed a mask Will was only cursorily aware he was wearing. 

Will shakes his head. 

“Yes and no,” he says. “It’s about -”

He pauses. 

He is not sure how far into the realm of honesty the two of them are to go. He isn’t sure whether he intends to say your latest murder or to keep them separate as long as possible. Hannibal’s practically got his ears pricked toward him, he’s so eager to listen. It makes Will want to laugh, but it also makes him feel uncomfortably powerful. 

That feeling is the reason he opts for the game, at least for a little while more. He cannot bear the thought of everything out in the open while Hannibal looks at him like that. 

“It’s about the Ripper’s latest work.” 

Hannibal does not try to contain his satisfaction. Will is surprised he isn’t purring. 

“You called them murders before.” 

“They _were_ murders before.” 

“Not now?” 

Will grimaces. “The murder is .... just a consequence.” 

“Of the love letter,” Hannibal says, looking up at Will with his body very still. 

“I thought so at first,” Will says carefully, and something shifts in Hannibal like a cloud passing over a deep well. The fear it evokes in Will feels horribly, unimaginably intimate. “Then I thought of it more as a seduction.” 

Hannibal blinks twice, and Will watches his mouth open just a little. He looks utterly captivated, like he never wants to look away from Will again, so Will turns his back on him and paces the balcony library. 

“Then I realized I was looking at it as a single work, instead of the series it was.” 

Hannibal’s voice is lower than Will’s ever heard it, none of its usual calculated lightness present at all. 

“And what was the series to you?” 

Will grips the railing in one hand at the tone of Hannibal’s voice. He watches Hannibal’s eyes go to it. 

“A war of attrition,” Will says. 

Hannibal’s eyes do not leave Will’s fingers on the railing. 

“Waged by whom?” 

“Both of us,” Will says, voice suddenly very rough. 

“Won by whom?” 

Will feels himself smile. “Both of us.” 

“Have dinner with me.”

It startles Will, the off-track immediacy of it, the barely concealed eagerness. 

Will finally looks at his face, then. He grins.

“If you wanted to have me for dinner, Hannibal,” he says, teasing even as a thrill of genuine terror sears him to the soles of his feet, “You just needed to ask.” 

“Tonight,” Hannibal says. It is less a request and more a demand, now. His voice is very tight. 

Will realizes all at once that Hannibal is gripping a letter opener in one hand, so tightly that there is blood welling up from between his fingers and dripping sluggishly onto the floor. An incongruous feeling of terrified desperation seizes him at the sight of it.

Will had not ever considered that looking death in the face would be such a singularly pleasurable experience. The fear in him is utterly indistinguishable from the rest of the adrenaline: rage, anticipation, violent longing. Murder.

“Tonight.”

He takes no weapons with him to dinner. He either does this with his hands, or not at all. Either one seems equally likely. 

Hannibal answers the door much faster than usual, as if he’s been waiting next to it. He’s not wearing a suit. 

Will’s never seen him out of one before. He’s got a sweater on. 

_Something he can move in,_ Will thinks with an inappropriately giddy thrill. 

They don’t speak much. Hannibal leads him to the kitchen - of course - and pours him a very expensive whiskey while he describes what he’s making. It’s mostly in French and Will is less concerned with it than he is with watching Hannibal’s hands on his knife while he chops shallots. 

He watches Hannibal prepare kidney - perfectly, of course - and his mouth waters. He gives up on the game all at once, fingers tingling with anticipation. He has no idea what is going to happen. 

He drinks his whiskey, smacks his lips rudely and sighs, then asks casually, “Who are we eating?” 

Hannibal looks up sharply. 

He blinks twice, gives Will an obvious once over for weapons. At least - he thinks it’s for weapons. 

Hannibal turns back to the kidney with an uncomfortably pleased air, as if he’s proud of Will. 

“You came here empty handed, William.” 

“I did.” 

Hannibal turns the kidney in the pan. It sizzles. “You intend to kill me with your hands?” 

Will laughs. “What, you expected me to shoot you?” 

“I had no expectation,” Hannibal says, glancing up at Will and then back to the pan. “Only fantasy.” 

The breath leaves Will’s chest so quickly it physically hurts. He is acutely aware of the knife, inches from Hannibal’s hand. Of the way Hannibal’s standing. Of the anticipatory violence in his expression. 

He can hardly get the words out, and when he does they are tight and breathless and almost embarrassed. 

“Tell me.” 

Hannibal takes the pan off the heat, but Will can still hear the kidney sizzling. 

“Often I imagined a hunting knife,” Hannibal says conversationally, putting his hands on the counter, “One you made yourself.” 

His voice is very casual, but Will can hear what’s under it and it surprises him. He’d expected the violence and the possessive, suffocating arousal but he had not dared to expect the pure, almost unhinged desperation. He swallows heavily. He’s sweating. 

Will has several hunting knives he’s made himself. He’s suddenly very certain that Hannibal has been inside his house. It thrills him, for some reason. 

“Where?” He asks, and is startled by the tone of his own voice. 

He’s leaning with his hands on the counter too, now. Across the kitchen island from Hannibal. The knife is almost exactly between them. 

“My heart,” Hannibal says. “I thought of you cutting it out and eating it.” 

Will sees it: kneeling over him on the ground, watching the last spark of devotion and destructive curiosity fade from Hannibal’s eyes. The taste of his beating heart. 

Hannibal smiles at him across the counter, and it is pitch black and horrifying, and Will feels something in him relax for the first time in his whole life. He is achingly hard, dizzy and lightheaded with it. 

“Would you let me?” Will asks, barely a whisper. 

“Yes.” 

Will suddenly has an urge to launch himself over the counter and wrap his hands around Hannibal’s throat. He asks, “Would you take mine?” 

“Yes,” Hannibal says, breathless this time. “I would take everything of yours.” 

“I know you would,” Will says, and he finally moves around the counter. They’re inches apart, now. 

“I think you would kill me with your teeth,” Will continues, and reaches over to run his fingertips over the edge of the knife. It’s cold, so sharp it quickens his breath. “I think even your hands would put too much distance between us.” 

Hannibal seems to have forgotten the food. Every single part of him is focused so entirely on Will it looks like he isn’t breathing. It makes Will want to smile, but he doesn’t. 

Hannibal is deathly still. 

“You wouldn’t be able to use a knife,” Will says, and deliberately pricks his finger on the tip of the one on the counter. Hannibal looks at it with barely concealed jealousy on his face. “You can’t stand anything else touching me except you.” 

It is as if time itself has stopped in the kitchen. 

Hannibal looks at him as if he can hardly stand to do it. He holds himself with the air of a starving man at the dinner table. 

“Tell me, Will,” Hannibal says, voice very dark, “When did the scales first fall from your eyes?” 

“Before Psyche and Eros,” Will says, though he doesn’t specify how soon before. 

Very suddenly, Will grips the handle of the kitchen knife and throws it into the corner, and the slide of it across the floor in the stillness of the kitchen is deafening. Will’s blood is still on it. 

He looks Hannibal in the eyes and puts his bloody finger in his own mouth. 

Hannibal’s breath goes out of him all at once. 

“You have a truly stunning capacity for cruelty, Will,” he says, winded. His eyes are fever bright. “It is breathtaking.” 

Will keeps his eyes on Hannibal, smiles. Then he says, “You forgot the food.” 

“No, I didn’t.” 

It’s all the warning he gets. 

Hannibal is so brutally, unexpectedly fast that Will barely has time to duck before Hannibal is reaching for a new knife in the knife block. It grazes Will’s forearm anyway. 

Will turns, lands a vicious right hook to Hannibal’s liver, and ducks again when the knife comes back. 

It feels absurdly like a game, and even knowing Hannibal is truly aiming to kill does not lessen the excitement pounding in Will’s blood. It’s _fun._

Something he had previously thought very precious to him shakes entirely loose, and he comes unstuck from the shreds of his own morality all at once. He rolls past the kitchen island, grabs the knife he’d thrown to the floor, and hurls it at Hannibal’s heart with a wide, honest grin on his face. He wants to scream. 

It is a blur of blood and panting and broken kitchenware. 

Hannibal gets a hand on him, curls it into the collar of his shirt, and Will holds it there even as he goes to shove the knife out of Hannibal’s other hand. He twists Hannibal’s wrist until it cracks, and Hannibal grunts and drops the knife onto the floor. Will kicks it away and winds a hand into Hannibal’s bloody hair. 

“I would have broken open every one of your bones,” Hannibal says, voice wavering with exertion and possession, “I would have seen every part of you.” 

Will wrenches Hannibal’s head back by the hair, wraps his other hand around Hannibal’s throat and squeezes hard. 

“Do it,” he says softly, some mix of teasing and begging. He squeezes harder, watches the skin under Hannibal’s jaw go red under his fingers, and imagines putting his teeth there. He imagines tearing out Hannibal’s throat. 

Hannibal’s eyes - dark, impossibly dark, terrifying and destructive and horribly beautiful like the rest of him - go to Will’s mouth and then back up to look him in the eye again. 

“Will.” His voice is thin, little more than a breath with how hard Will’s squeezing. His face is red. “What are you thinking of?” 

Will drags him closer. He can feel that both of them are shaking and both of them are hard and both of them are panting too loud. He’s barely sure who’s who. 

He’s never felt like this: this all-consuming, mindless animal instinct all focused on one person. It’s possessive and furious and terrified and starving all at once. He wants to cut Hannibal open and climb all the way inside him. He wants Hannibal to crack open his ribs and eat his lungs right out of his chest. 

“Don’t you know?” Will whispers, loosening his grip and setting his teeth hard against Hannibal’s jaw. “Don’t you?” 

Hannibal suddenly drops out of Will’s grip, falls to his knees on the floor. He takes one or two huge, surfacing breaths, and then grabs Will’s hips in his hands. 

Will doesn’t ask what he’s doing, but it’s a near thing. His head is reeling. His ears are ringing. He’s lost a lot of blood and he probably has a concussion. 

Hannibal’s hands actually shake on Will’s belt. Will can’t seem to look away from it. There’s blood all over them, too. Will doesn’t know whose it is. 

This was always inevitable. Will knows it, but that doesn’t make the touch of Hannibal’s lips on his cock any less of a shock. Will isn’t sure who makes the louder noise. 

He’s suddenly so dizzy. His vision goes blue around the edges, his ears start to ring so loud they shut everything out. His cock is suddenly so far down Hannibal’s throat it’s like Hannibal’s trying to choke on it. 

It’s hot, it’s hotter than Will can ever remember this being. It’s better than anything he’s ever felt. Hannibal’s teeth are so dangerously, terribly close to him. 

Hannibal seems to read his mind, wraps a hand around Will’s legs and pulls him closer, grazes those fucking teeth against the head of Will’s cock. 

A jolt of terror and lightning shoots through Will all the way to his toes, and he has to suck in a huge breath to stop from coming. He hadn’t realized how close he was. 

“Hannibal -” the tone of his voice is so weak it’s embarrassing, or it would be if he weren’t about to pass out. “Fuck, that feels - oh, I can’t -” 

His legs give out. 

Hannibal half catches him, half throws him onto his stomach on the kitchen floor. He lands hard and it hurts. His shirt gets scrunched up and Hannibal pushes it up further, digs his nails greedily into more of Will’s skin like he can get inside him that way. 

There’s a slippery spot of blood under Will’s cheek, but he isn’t sure whose it is. His whole body feels high, and everything feels so good, and he still kind of wants to kill Hannibal. 

“I think I need a doctor,” Will slurs, and Hannibal’s whole body weight is suddenly on top of him, pressing Will hard into the kitchen floor. He’s so hot, and he presses his face against Will’s hair and then kisses Will’s ear. He’s shaking. It’s the first time he has kissed Will. 

“I know,” Hannibal says against his ear. His voice rumbles through Will’s chest like he’s the one who has spoken. 

Hannibal’s hands hurt, on his body. Will is sore everywhere, dizzy and bleeding and he wants those hands to hurt him worse, squirms under them and licks his lips and pants. 

“Hannibal, please.” 

Hannibal’s hips stutter against Will and he sucks in a quick little breath against Will’s ear. 

“Say it again.” 

Will’s pants are still around his knees. His cock hurts, pressed between their combined body weight and the floor. It makes him squirm.

_“Please.”_

Hannibal makes an inhuman sound, puts a hand on the back of Will’s neck and squeezes very hard for a second, and then immediately yanks Will’s pants off and spreads his legs. 

“Oh _motherfucking_ fuck -”

He should have expected this, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t dared to think of it. 

Hannibal makes another low, deeply satisfied noise and presses his tongue in, and it vibrates through Will’s whole body. Will makes a noise like an animal. It is shockingly intimate, horribly. It feels a thousand times worse than Hannibal’s mouth on his cock. 

“Jesus fuck. Christ. Fucking god.” 

Hannibal’s hands dig very hard into Will’s skin and he murmurs, “Language, William.” 

It’s said right up against his asshole, filthy-wet and hot and it’s so low it feels like he can feel the words all the way in his stomach. Will makes a fist and slams it on the ground, groans loudly. 

Hannibal pauses but doesn’t pull away. Will can feel him smiling. He lays his cheek against the inside of Will’s thigh. 

“I swear to fucking god,” Will says, and there is no teasing in his voice at all, “I will _kill_ _you_ if you stop.” 

Hannibal bites Will hard on the ass, right where it meets his thigh. It breaks the skin. Will curses. 

He gets Hannibal’s tongue back for a second - just a single perfect, scorching, delirious second - before he stops again. 

“Would you really?” 

His _voice_ \- 

Will arches his back, feels his eyes roll back in his head at the pitch black insatiable hunger of Hannibal’s voice. He feels it too: that unimaginable desire to possess, to be possessed. Everywhere, anywhere. He wants everything, even Hannibal’s life. 

“Yeah,” he says, fervently honest. Hannibal groans softly and presses a finger inside Will then, and Will’s words hitch up violently at the way it hurts. “I would, I would.” 

“I want you to,” Hannibal says, and his voice sounds almost tender, devoted, “I would cut out my heart and give it to you if I didn’t so want to witness you take it for yourself.” 

His tongue is back then, first next to his finger and then replacing it. Will moans, an unrestrained sound he’s never made before, and on the tail end of it says, “I want it, I want everything.” 

Hannibal makes another noise up against Will’s asshole. Will reconsiders dying again. He feels very close to it. 

“Jesus Christ. Fuck, oh fuck, that’s - please, more -”

He has no idea how much time passes. He’s delirious with blood loss and the concussion and an arousal so violent that it feels like warfare. Hannibal can’t seem to get enough of him, tongue impossibly hot and wet and insistent on his asshole, dragging very slow over it and then pushing inside over and over and _over,_ fingers spreading him open and digging in so hard that his nails break the skin. Will hardly feels like a person in the face of all that greed. He keeps murmuring _More, more, more._

There is a long pause, and Will just lets his ears ring and thinks that maybe this is when Hannibal kills him, but then Hannibal’s back and he’s laying tender, apologetic kisses all over every bruise, every sluggishly bleeding knife wound, every burning scratch and bite on his shoulders, his back, the insides of his thighs. 

When he slips two fingers inside Will with that same greedy desperation as before, they are slick with something and it’s so easy for them to sink all the way in that it’s almost embarrassing. 

“Oh, please. Please.” 

Will’s voice is slurred, almost stoned. Hannibal seems nearly as bad. He pulls his fingers out, ignores Will’s noise of protest, lays his forehead against Will’s back and wraps his arms around Will’s hips. He presses them together until Will thinks he might break his bones. 

“Never,” Hannibal says, and he’s panting, “Have I wanted something like I want to be in every part of you.” 

Hannibal’s hands are shaking. Will’s back arches. 

“Please, yes,” he says, voice shredded to nothing, “Hannibal.” 

“Anything, anything, darling,” Hannibal says, so painfully tender even as he sinks his thumb into a very deep cut on Will’s side. “Anything for you.” 

Will jerks, tries to get away from the sharp pain in his side and then sighs into it, whole body feeling fever-hot. He starts murmuring _Inside inside please_ over and over again. 

“Where, Will?” Hannibal asks, pushing his thumb deeper into Will’s side. “Where do you want me inside you first?” 

First. Will shudders hard at the way Hannibal says it, like he would crack open his rib cage and climb in if Will asked. 

He would, they both know he would. 

Will reaches back and touches his own asshole. It’s warm and loose and wet from Hannibal’s tongue in it and whatever else he found in the ruined kitchen.

“Here, here first.” 

Hannibal makes a wounded noise, then says, accent very thick, “Show me, darling.” 

Will doesn’t think about it. He just reaches back with both hands and spreads himself wide open for Hannibal to look at. 

He can feel it, the force of Hannibal’s singular attention. He can feel it in every mark Hannibal has left on him. He presses his face into the floor and shudders through a long breath, and then hisses, _“Please.”_

He doesn’t have to wait anymore then. It feels like being unmade more than the rest of it had. He feels so wide open it makes his heart skip. His toes clench so hard they stay like that. Hannibal’s cock is too big and it hurts and it’s /so far inside, and Will finally feels like they are almost close enough. 

Almost. 

“More,” Will hisses, moans when Hannibal gives it to him. “More, closer, please, _closer.”_

Hannibal presses them up against each other and Will can feel every cut on Hannibal’s skin, heat coming off every single place Will marked him. He feels /good, and the rasp of Hannibal’s tattered shirt and the smear of sweat and blood on Will’s back and the smell of him, god - 

_“Closer-”_

“Any closer and I’ll be you,” Hannibal murmurs.

Will gasps, nods, pleads wordlessly. Every ounce of shame is gone from him. 

Hannibal tilts his hips, nudges Will’s prostate once and groans when Will shudders, then fucks him so hard and so ruthlessly that it makes Will scream. It hurts his throat. He’s never done such a thing. He doesn’t ever want it to stop. 

He’s going to pass out. He needs Hannibal closer. He reaches back and blindly grabs a handful of Hannibal’s hair, pulls him forward until Hannibal sets his teeth on the back of Will’s neck. 

Will nods, tries to say _Yes_ but can’t get it out. Stutters a few times before giving up and whining like a fucking animal. 

Up against the back of Will’s neck Hannibal hisses, “Tell me how it feels, Will.” 

He sounds dangerously unhinged. 

Will takes a huge breath, stutters out, “Hurts - _fuck_ \- ”

“Yes, it hurts,” Hannibal gasps, pulling Will impossibly closer, winding too-tight arms around Will’s hips and then a hand around Will’s cock. 

It is like a gunshot to the gut. Will makes a high, cut-off noise. 

“Beautiful,” Hannibal says, pressing his nose into Will’s hair, fucking him so ruthlessly that Will feels like his body might be going numb, “Fucking beautiful, Will.” 

It nearly shocks him into coming right then, the sound of that coming out of Hannibal’s mouth. 

“I want to tear you to pieces,” Hannibal says, teeth very sharp on Will’s shoulder, the side of his neck, like he’s thinking of eating him. He’s panting so hard it’s difficult to hear him. “I never want to be parted from you again.” 

“Jesus, holy shit, that’s - don’t -”

“No one else, no one else will touch you.” 

“Don’t stop, don’t stop -” 

He doesn’t. His grip tightens to near painful on Will’s cock, and he pushes in jarringly, invasively deep and stays there with little possessive rolls of his hips, and his voice hitches and drops down to almost nothing when he says, “I will kill anyone who touches you.” 

It thrills Will more than anything, the utter certainty in Hannibal’s voice. The abject, ruthless honesty. It winds up very tight in the pit of his stomach. 

“I - wanna - oh, my god, I wanna -”

“What do you want, darling?” 

Will already knows he’s going to come, but he holds his breath up until the last second when it’s nearly on him. Then, with the rush of it rising his voice he says, “I wanna - watch you - kill for me - ” 

Hannibal curses viciously in a language that Will doesn’t understand, sets his teeth against the back of Will’s neck and breaks the skin when he comes. 

The feeling of it - of Hannibal’s teeth so deep in his neck - carries Will so far through orgasm that it starts to make him feel insane. It is like being struck by lightning and then catching fire: brilliant, shocking, and then slow and hot and overwhelming and it goes on and on and on, and he grunts and pants and moans like he’s dying, because he is. 

He thinks he passes out. 

When he wakes, they are still on the floor of the kitchen. Will has shallow little cuts all over him, a few that will need stitches, and one bone-deep stab to his shoulder that might need a hospital. He’s covered in blood and bruises, and the bite to the back of his neck is going to scar. He feels a deep, sated satisfaction at that. 

Hannibal’s sitting up against the cabinets with Will in his lap, picking glass and bits of shattered china out of Will’s hair. He’s got blood all down the side of his neck and his chest, his hair is stuck to his face with blood and sweat and who knows what else, and there is a deep cut along his cheekbone that’s probably going to scar too. Will wants it to, so he lifts a hand to Hannibal’s face and pries it wider with his thumb. Hannibal’s eyes roll back in his head and he pants, open mouthed, under Will’s hands. He’s shaking, waiting for Will to push in deeper. 

Will takes his hand away from Hannibal’s face and looks around. 

“We should go to a hospital.” 

Hannibal scoffs. 

“I am perfectly capable of stitching us up here.” 

Will looks at him dubiously. “Your legs work?” 

Hannibal pauses, looks down. One of his legs is bleeding badly. “Hm. No. Perhaps another moment, then.” 

Will relaxes against Hannibal’s legs. “Still gonna kill me?”

Hannibal’s smile is transparently fond, playful almost. 

“Probably not tonight.” 

“It’s cause I stabbed you, huh?” 

“You grazed me.” 

“Fuck off, I stabbed you.” 

“Don’t be rude, Will.” 

Will laughs. He is very dizzy. He almost certainly needs a hospital, though he knows all he’s likely to get is stitches without anesthetic in Hannibal’s bathtub. The thought makes his heart race again, for some insane reason. 

Compelled by this thought, Will whispers, “Hurt me again. Let me hurt you again.” 

Hannibal’s heart skips. Will can hear it. 

“Anything for you, darling.” 

**Author's Note:**

> *laughs hysterically*  
> sorry about all the blood or whatever


End file.
